A Podcast Review: Society as Technological Artifact

This post features perspectives and reflections based on the recent podcast curated by the Platform Design toolkit team. You can listen the whole episode here.

The conversation with John Robb sets the scene of how our decision making process keeps going through, even more intensively than before, a disruption. If technology is the musical score where our society plays and keeps adjusting how to tune and tackle global challenges, individuals and community grapple with a constant rewiring for mindsets and organizational processes. Simone Cicero triggers a fascinating conversation with John who describes the journey that goes from tribalism, institutions, markets age to the current scenario: networks of networks. This is literally happening right now. As the pandemic hits our whole values framework, every networks and self-organising teams grapple with the design of a decision making process, participatory governance.

Whilst Simone and Stina articulated good questions, John outlines how the complexity we all face calls for new way of thinking. Our presence in larger system as much as at community levels is intertwined with our resilience.

By listening to the podcast, one of the biggest challenges is to build resilient communities – that is also part of John’s work – is the root of our current transformation. As our learning, working, communicating and feelings are going increasingly under pressure, we need to shape our mindset around resilience and how to practice it with empathy.

As John keeps describing, the networks decision making process comes with new patterns. They emerge as groups are mobilized to share methods, ideas faster and faster. In networks, the information discovery speeds up through smooth engagement and participation to then face the transition with complex environment. One example is the local and global interplay of values and outcomes.

The institutions and their decision making process have been undressed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Their passive and slow response, the lack of systemic approach andf vision is crystal clear. If the virus is faster than bureaucracy, the importance of this disruption is not to exclude the public institution, instead, it is to rewire a collaborative approach between public, private and open source organizations.

The questions from Simone lead in John explaining also the networks challenges. The overload of interactions along with the feedback loop in the self-organising team, how to add and articulate value co-creation are good examples of purposeful headache.

On the cusp of the current global and local call for change, sociocracy offers a menu of tools and practices to enhance alignment, wellbeing and fulfillment. CoLab is a permaculture project that breathes regenerative networks and organisation.

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You can also dive into the ‘underworld’ of Telegram – or Reddit – to join decentralized teams and experience the level of inclusiveness, cohesion to different audiences. It is the melting pot where self-organising teams thrive and grow to serve existing or new ecosystems.

The podcast is an inspiring repository to rethink our way to assess the impact of value co-creation, how to take responsibility and create meaning in our actions.

The strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack. —Rudyard Kipling